


desperado (where you gonna run to)

by second_chances



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, F/M, Wild West AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-11 07:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8969404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/second_chances/pseuds/second_chances
Summary: 'It is my personal opinion that we cannot take Snoke down without you. Sorry excuse of a man that you are at the moment.' Rey's eyes skimmed him up and down as though searching for something, and coming up wanting.Kylo could not fault her for that. He’d failed at being a good man a long time ago, and a bad man more recently. He was adrift between two worlds, belonging in neither.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [La_Catrina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/La_Catrina/gifts).



> _You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free except the grace of God. _-True Grit__

“You’re a dirty cheat, Ren.”

Kylo paused, whiskey glass halfway to his lips, and quirked an eyebrow. “What was that?” he said pleasantly.

Most of the men around the pazaak table shifted uneasily, ready to either bolt or whip out their guns at any moment. In a room full of outlaws and various other unsavory characters, such accusations inevitably ended in some kind of bloodshed.

Across the table, Bala-Tik leaned forward, repeating in his thick Scottish brogue, “I said, you’re a dirty cheat, Kylo Ren.”

Kylo set his glass down with an audible _thunk_ , and he didn’t miss the small flinch of the man sitting nearest him. It was a comforting thing to know that even men on the wrong side of the law still feared him, though he’d defected from Snoke over a year before.

“Gentlemen,” Kylo said, rolling the word off his tongue mockingly but spreading his hands out in a placating gesture. He always found he struck more terror into people by being gentle, his infamous temper widely known to be balanced on a knife’s edge. “I’m afraid I cannot just sit here while this man impugns my honor.”

Everyone watched, unmoving, as he shucked his black leather gloves, but when he moved a hand to the top clasp of his jacket, at least three of the men’s hands flew to their holsters.

“Easy,” Kylo chuckled, undoing the first clasp and moving down to the next. “I am merely proving that I can’t possibly be hiding anything up my sleeves.” Once freed from the tight confines of his jacket, he tossed it over the back of the chair and made a show of unbuttoning and rolling up the sleeves of the black cotton shirt he wore beneath, high enough to expose almost the entire length of his forearms. Then, deliberately, he leaned back and placed one booted foot on the table at a time, tipping his chair onto two legs with a nonchalance that demonstrated to everyone in the room how little he feared them.

They all seemed to relax with him, except Bala-Tik, who continued to glare daggers.

No matter.

They’d play another hand, and Kylo would prove to them all that he wasn’t slipping in extra cards, and there would be nothing anyone could do about him taking all their money, short of engaging in a shootout. Which was always a possibility in Mos Eisley, but these days Kylo was just as careless of his life as he was confident in his skills. If he went out counting cards, outwitting them all, in a blaze of glory outnumbered ten to one—well, there wouldn’t really be anyone to care, would there? And maybe he was his father’s son after all, much as he’d once hated the thought.

Kylo felt eyes on him and, tipping his hat back with a brush of his knuckle, he slid his gaze to the glossy mahogany wood of the bar counter and the weathered line of stools in front of it. The girl was still there, pretending to nurse a glass of amber liquid and trying to blend in. And she would have—dressed in men’s clothes as she was—were it not for the brown braid that stuck out from under her hat and ended halfway down her back. Kylo might not have spotted her in the crowd at all but for the wary sharpness of her gaze, a quality he could easily identify in others because it had been his own constant companion for years, the look of someone who was accustomed to being half-hunter, half-hunted.

Their eyes met for a heartbeat, then she tipped her head down, effectively hiding her face behind the brim of her hat, an action that might read as timidity to some, but Kylo saw it for what it was. Her eyes were quick, intelligent, had already taken the measure of him, and now she didn’t want him to see what she’d found reflected on her face. She wanted to sit at the bar, observing the pazaak game while remaining unnoticed and unmolested.

Well, if that was how she wanted to play it, he could give her a show. One corner of Kylo’s mouth tipped up. A crowd of murderous outlaws became predictable, almost a bore, once one became accustomed to them. The girl was something new, something interesting—fascinating, even. If he wasn’t careful, she could be a distraction.

He returned his attention to the game, confident he wouldn’t lose the girl in the crowd. She wasn’t leaving anytime soon. She might be feigning indifference, but her attention was riveted on the dramatic scene unfolding before her. Riveted on him too, maybe, which he had the distinct feeling should concern him.

But that was a worry for later. At present he needed to concern himself with winning a pile of money from a table of criminals.

And win he did, hand after hand, and instead of folding, the fools kept upping their bets, emptying their pockets even as the stacks of gold coins in front of Kylo grew higher and higher. Finally, out of money and luck, a few of them began throwing up their hands in defeat. Kylo tossed back another gulp of whiskey and shot a sly glance around the table, careful to keep his expression a mask of insouciance, even as he was keenly attuned to the slightest twitch of his opponents’ fingers. He’d been shot before for beating men less soundly.

Bala-Tik’s face was growing redder by the minute, fit to murder the next person who looked at him. Kylo shifted in his seat, the weight of his pistols in their holsters a comforting press against his hips. No one wanted to get on the wrong side of the leader of the Guavian Death Gang, but Kylo had been in similar scrapes before and no doubt would be in worse in the future. It was in his blood, or maybe it was his fate.

Before long, only Bala-Tik and Crokind Shand, a Kanjiklub member with an eyepatch and a mean streak wider than the Mississippi, were left in the game. Kylo shifted his eyes between his hand of cards and the two men. It was clear he was going to win; the only mystery was whether or not they would let him walk away with their money. He wasn’t exactly eager to get into a three-way shootout in the middle of a cantina crowded with members of two different outlaw gangs.

On the other hand, he had a reputation to uphold.

Absorbed as he was in thinking five steps ahead of his opponents, the dull metallic clink of coins dropping onto the table nearly made him jump out of his chair. He jerked his chin up to see a hand hovering over the coins, all slim fingers and smooth skin and definitely not belonging to a man.

“Deal me in.” The girl’s voice had a stubbornness to it that belied her slim frame. Kylo darted a fleeting glance at her face, just long enough to take in the smattering of freckles across her nose, the fire in her eyes, the steel set of her jaw.

Kylo’s gaze settled on his cards again, not even bothering to observe his opponents’ reactions to this interruption. “No.”

Her fingers, still in his line of sight, twitched, and she curled them inwards into a fist, her knuckles turning white. Kylo could almost _feel_ the anger coming off of her in waves, an inconvenient flare of interest sparking in him at that, though he managed to keep his eyes off her. He flicked a card out of his hand and moved to drop it face-up on the table, but the girl seized it before he could, her fingers warm against the back of his hand. Kylo raised his head, slowly, to fix her with a baleful glare.

To her credit—or maybe just evidence of reckless stupidity—the girl didn’t so much as flinch. “Why not?” she challenged. “Afraid you might be bested by a woman?” It was only then he registered the unusual cadence of the girl’s voice, the aristocratic accent so out of place in this godforsaken desert town, so startling coming from this scrappy, skinny girl with sunburned cheeks and dust from the road covering her trousers.

A short burst of laughter sounded from Bala-TIk’s direction. “Ah, let her play, Ren. Where’s the harm in it?”

Kylo turned his glare on the outlaw, who was now wearing a sharp, calculating grin that served to put him further on edge.

“In a hurry to end the game, Ren?” Crokind Shand fixed his one dark, suspicious eye on him, and Kylo was overruled.

“Fine,” he growled, pulling his hand from the girl’s grasp and kicking an empty chair out. She took her seat with a lithe grace that reminded him unsettlingly of a mountain lion. She was slim under her loose men’s clothing, but she was tall for a woman, and Kylo eyed the gun holsters hiding under her overcoat. Only a fool would underestimate this one.

Bala-Tik was a fool. “What are you doing in these parts, sweetheart?” He had a patronizing smirk on his face as he made his play.

The girl didn’t miss a beat. “Winning at cards,” she said sweetly, taking the hand and raking the pile of coins it earned her towards her chest. Bala-Tik scowled, and the four of them fell silent as they began playing in earnest.   

For several hands, Kylo was impressed by the girl’s luck and obvious knowledge of the game, though still resting easy in the assurance he would emerge victorious. But when a hand went to Crokind Shand, a tiny, satisfied smile tugged at her lips, and Kylo found himself watching her face more than his own cards. Tiny lines of concentration had taken up residence between her eyebrows, and her eyes were quick, following each movement of the game, each card laid, each bet made. He could practically see the wheels turning in her head, and Kylo realized with a start— _she was counting cards_ . Not only that, but—and it hit him with a force that knocked the breath right out of his chest—she was using _his_ method, the method he’d been taught as a child by Han Solo and Lando Calrissian, those infamous thieving scoundrels who’d spent years gambling their way up and down the western frontier.

He searched her face again, yet still came up empty of answers. He’d never set eyes on her in his life. Who _was_ she?

Kylo shook his head to clear it, resettling his elaborately tooled hat on his head. He could not afford this distraction, not now when the girl was steadily and subtly turning the tide of the game in her favor, using his own methods against him. She was studying him now, in much the same way she’d been watching the cards, a glint of mischief in her eyes as if she _knew_ why he was unsettled, though the straight line of her lips and set of her jaw gave nothing away. He needed to distract her, and quickly, before she walked away with all the money he’d been working for hours to win.

Kylo sat back in his chair, spreading his legs wide to take up as much space as possible, allowing his eyes to rake over her. “Where is your husband?” he asked, a mocking tilt to his lips.

The girl blinked at him, eyes wide and startled, before her cheeks reddened. Not in embarrassment, though—no, not this one. She was _furious_ , Kylo noted with satisfaction. He’d succeeded in distracting her with four well-aimed words.

“I do not have one,” she bit out.

Kylo leaned forward in one quick movement, propping his elbows on his knees. “Do you want one?” he breathed, raising one eyebrow suggestively.

The girl’s nostrils flared, gaze fixed on her cards again. “I thank you for the offer, but I would sooner marry my horse.”

Kylo tilted his head. “Mos Eisley may be outside the purview of the law, but bestiality is still generally frowned upon in these parts.”

Her mouth twitched, and Kylo only had a moment to worry what trap he’d unintentionally walked into before she rejoined, not even glancing up, “In that case, I really couldn’t marry _you_ then, could I?”

Bala-Tik let out a whistle, setting his cards face-down on the table to point a finger at her. "I like you."

Kylo scowled, pressing his lips together to curb his errant tongue before his attempts to sabotage her backfired on him in some other spectacular way.

In the end, the girl beat them all, a small crowd made up of the cantina’s rough-looking patrons gathered around their table to watch this mysterious slip of a woman take three notorious outlaws for all they were worth. Shand and Bala-Tik folded well before Kylo, too flabbergasted to be angry, and as Kylo’s money dwindled in front of him, they grew more and more visibly delighted, any ire they might have had at losing their own money erased by their deep satisfaction at witnessing Kylo Ren mastered at his own game.

The girl remained cool as a cucumber throughout, focused on the task at hand. It may as well have been just her and him in the whole room for all the attention she paid the murmurs and sporadic hoots and hollers as she won yet another hand. By contrast, Kylo was having trouble keeping a rein on his temper, made all the more difficult by the girl’s calm indifference to everything around her.

Kylo threw down the last of his cards with bad grace, shoving his chair back violently as he stood, and after all this time _that_ was what made the girl flinch, one hand flying to the pistol at her hip like she thought he was about to start a brawl with her. Kylo scowled darkly and strode off towards the bar, flinging his empty glass at the nearest wall as he went, forcing several cantina patrons to duck as the shards went flying.

He wiled away the rest of the night alone in a corner, getting probably more drunk than was advisable, glowering at anyone who so much as glanced his way. He could be thanking his lucky stars that he wasn’t the sort of gambler who bet all the money he had on him, but he was too sour over his loss to feel grateful for much of anything. The girl had disappeared while he was purchasing a bottle of whiskey from the barkeep—and good riddance. An itching curiosity about her still lingered in the back of his mind, but he was determined to drown it out by any means necessary.

He might have passed out slumped back in his chair, but for the sudden urgent need to take a piss. Which was probably all for the better—he tried to avoid doing anything as vulnerable as sleeping in front of the cutthroat types who frequented the cantina, and most of Mos Eisley. The call of nature got the better of him before he’d made it three steps out the door, so he settled for ambling down the dark dirt alley between the wooden buildings, freeing himself from the tight constraints of his pants, tilting his head back to stare up at the stars above and sighing in relief.

A telltale click to his left sent him scrambling for one of his own guns, moving slower than usual in his tipsy state, cursing himself for being so careless.

“Before you draw that pistol, you should probably holster the other.” The girl’s posh tone was suffused with wry amusement, clearly at his expense.

Kylo let out a quiet breath and tipped his head forward, one hand still on his dick, hoping the darkness of the alley meant she had not actually _seen_ it. As if she hadn’t humiliated him enough for one evening, catching him half seas over, pissing against a wall with his pants open was a step too far.

When the offending garment was safely fastened again, he turned to her slowly, gloved hands in the air. The girl was in rare company—few people could say they’d ever gotten the drop on him. If she was feeling any sort of triumph about that it was impossible for him to tell; she was standing far enough away that he could barely make out her silhouette in the dark. The metal barrel of her gun was a different story—the silver of it catching the dim light of the moon every time she shifted, twinkling like a star.

“Come for the rest of my money?” he asked, affecting a bored tone. “Not much left to speak of; I drank most of it.”

“I am not here for your money.” The girl took two slow, careful steps forward, bringing her close enough that he could see how steadily she held the gun in her two outstretched hands, coming to a stop with her feet apart in a rock-solid stance. “I’m here for you, Ben Solo.”

Kylo froze at the sound of his true name, so long had it been since he’d heard it spoken aloud. He swallowed hard, mind racing as he searched in vain for any hint of who this girl could be or what she could want from him. His immediate impulse was to flee—he was not stupid enough to go for his own revolver at this point, but even running would be a gamble. Something about her gave him the impression she was a crack shot, and he was disinclined to test that hypothesis.

And besides all that, the girl’s reappearance had once again stirred up all the burning curiosity that had been surging in his chest earlier in the evening. As long as she had a cocked gun trained on him, he might as well try to satisfy it.

“Who _are_ you?” he breathed, hoping he sounded less shaken than he felt.

“I’m no one.”

Something about the way she said it gave him pause. Not dismissively, like she was hiding a secret—just simple, straightforward, like she believed it to be true. Kylo tilted his head. “Somehow I doubt that.”

She took another step forward. “This is about you, not me.”

Kylo stayed perfectly still. “If you’re going to shoot me, I would like to know who is pulling the trigger.”

She huffed out an annoyed breath. “I’m not going to shoot—” The girl snapped her mouth shut and glared at him. “No one is getting _shot_ , as long as you do as I say.”

Kylo’s mouth twitched, some of the stiffness going out of his spine. The girl was no greenhorn, but she’d just betrayed a softness he could not be sure of before. “I’ll do as you say once you tell me who you are.”

She breathed deeply through her nose as if summoning patience, then went quiet for a long moment. “I’m Pistol Rey, the kid gunslinger,” she said at last, a sharp, mocking edge to her tone. “Ever heard of me?”

Kylo frowned. “Should I have?”

The girl seemed to deflate a little, like she really had expected him to recognize the name. “Unkar Plutt’s traveling wild west show?”

That he _had_ heard of. “You don’t look like a kid.” Almost against his own volition, Kylo’s eyes strayed down her body, though there was little enough of it to see under her baggy overcoat in the dark.

“That was a long time ago.” The steel was back in her voice.

“What are you now?”

“My name _is_ Rey. I’m a bounty hunter.”

Kylo’s eyebrows shot up, and he risked crossing his arms over his chest. The girl—Rey—followed the movement with her eyes, but allowed it. “You look too young to be a bounty hunter. And a woman to boot.”

Rey dropped her arms enough that the angle of her gun shifted to point at Kylo’s groin, then smiled sweetly. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to antagonize me at the moment?”

“It was a fair observation!” Kylo protested hotly, all too aware that starting arguments while on the business end of a pistol was foolhardy at best, suicidal at worst—but he had never had much in the way of restraint.

Rey scowled. “I have a partner who takes care of the official paperwork.”

“Oh? Where is he?”

“I’m not here on business.”

Kylo raised an eyebrow again, slapping a smirk on his face. “On what, then? Pleasure?”

It was too dark to say for sure, but he swore she flushed. “I’m not here to serve a warrant on you. And I’m not going to stand here explaining myself further when both the Guavian Death Gang and Kanjiklub could come stumbling out that door at any moment.” She twitched the gun, indicating that he should walk in front of her. “Now move.”

She marched him out of the alley and up the back stairway of the hotel across the street, muzzle pressed to the small of his back all the while. Kylo towered more than a head above her and had probably close to a hundred pounds on her—if he really wanted to risk tussling for control of her pistol he could. But to his own surprise, he wanted to hear what she had to say, wanted to know how she knew his true name, wanted to know what she wanted from him. 

Once in her room, Rey kicked the door shut behind her, not taking her eyes or her aim off him for a second. “Sit.”

Kylo cast his eyes over the room, considering. The only place to sit was the narrow, lumpy bed. For all Rey’s tough, worldly-wise exterior, there was an odd innocence to her, and Kylo found himself doubting that she had even considered the implications of taking a man into her room in the middle of the night.

He decided to obey, settling his back against the brass bars of the headboard and his long legs out over the worn quilt. “If you wanted to get me on a bed, you did not have to go to all this trouble.”

This time, by the light of the kerosene lamp beside the bed, it was easy to see her flush. “Shut up,” she hissed, holstering her pistol and handcuffing him to one of the bars with quick, practiced efficiency.

Kylo considered his shackled hands, reflecting that it was perhaps going to be more difficult to escape from this situation than he had initially anticipated. Still, he was determined not to give her the satisfaction of seeing any flicker of trepidation on his face. “Now that you have me at your mercy, are you going to tell me what you want with me?” he asked, rattling the handcuffs to emphasize his point.

Rey stepped back, crossing her arms over her chest, the soft light that fell on her making quite a fetching picture, for all she was his captor. She’d removed her hat and coat, loose hair that had fallen from her braid framing her face, and on second consideration the men’s clothing she wore was not quite so baggy on her as he had initially thought. Her belt cinched in her loose tan shirt somewhere between waist and hips, hinting at the slight curves beneath, and her pants were fitted enough to leave little to the imagination. Kylo had seen a woman or two wearing pants before, but none who looked like Rey. A stray wish that she would turn around for a moment so he could see the view from the back flitted through his head, and he pushed _that_ inconvenient distraction aside, instead attempting to focus on how annoyed he still was at her for beating him at pazaak.

But when she spoke, all thoughts of attraction and card games flew out of his head in an instant. “Your mother sent me,” she said, shifting her feet apart as though bracing for a storm.

Kylo’s eyes snapped to hers. She looked wary, as though she was walking barefoot into a nest of rattlesnakes, but her face was all painful, open honesty.

A swell of bitter longing surged through his chest at her words. It was all he could do to keep his lips from trembling as he tipped his head back against the bars of the bed with a motion so violent it knocked his hat clear off his head. “So _that’s_ how you beat me.”

“Is that all you have to say?” she demanded indignantly.

Kylo straightened, mustering all the dignity he could manage while awkwardly handcuffed to a bed, and snarled, “I’m not going home.”

Rey tipped her head, studying him. Kylo shifted under her gaze, disliking the way she was looking at him—some strange stew of pity, understanding, and contempt in her eyes. “I’m not going back to Yavin without you.”

“Then you may as well shoot me now and be done with it,” he said sourly.

One corner of her mouth curled up. “I don’t think your mother would take very kindly to me killing her precious son.”

“Save her the trouble of doing it herself,” Kylo muttered darkly, even as the word _precious_ seeped under his skin and wrapped itself around his heart like a steel band.

Rey made a frustrated noise and planted her hands on her hips. “I have something to say and you’re going to listen to me, Ben Solo. I didn’t spend weeks tracking you down to this...this,” she waved a hand in the air, “wretched hive of scum and villainy to watch you sulk.”

“Weeks?” Kylo repeated, unable to keep the dismay out of his voice. He prided himself on being illusive as a wisp of smoke in the wind. If he wasn’t, one of the several assassins Snoke had sent after him would have managed to kill him months ago. The very thought had him shifting uneasily on the bed, wondering if the girl was some trap his former boss had laid for him.

Oblivious to the direction his thoughts had taken, Rey gestured to his all-black ensemble. “You know, all of _this_ is not exactly the height of subtlety.”

Kylo glanced down at himself. She had a point, but when he’d left Snoke behind he couldn’t bring himself to leave everything behind, not quite knowing who he was if he did. “I’m Kylo Ren.”

Rey snorted, a decidedly unladylike sound—not that he would expect anything else from her. “Like hell you are.”

Kylo sighed, giving his shoulders a resignated roll. “Are you going to tell me why you’re here or just stand there insulting me?”

A flash of annoyance crossed her face, but she reined it in in favor of delivering her message. “We need your help. Snoke has started targeting Yavin. His men have already run a dozen families off their farms. They strike when we’re least expecting them, and the attacks are spread out over such a wide area, we can’t protect it all at once. He hasn’t attacked the town itself, but he’s bleeding us of resources, he’s stealing our land, and he’s not going to stop until he has control of Yavin itself.”

“That’s none of my concern,” Kylo said coldly, though he could not prevent the twinge of guilt at being confronted with a list of atrocities he had once committed on other towns.

“It’s _all_ of your concern,” Rey snapped, eyes blazing, burning into him. “It’s your family home! You deserted Snoke. It’s a safe bet on your part that he wants you dead. Would you rather keep running until you die or stand and fight him? This is your chance to put an end to all of it. This is your chance to make up for the things you did.”

“Like shooting my father?” he said viciously.

Rey’s eyes widened. “That was an accident,” she whispered. “That doesn’t mean you can’t come home.”

Kylo clenched his jaw. “Is that what she told you?”

Rey was quiet for a moment, fingers worrying at the fabric of her sleeve. It was the first physical sign of anxiety he’d seen from her. “Is that not true?” she asked in a small voice, and all at once she seemed painfully young and innocent.

“No accidents in gunfights,” Kylo said gruffly, the unwelcome sting of tears pricking at his eyes.

She took a step closer, perhaps unconsciously, as if sensing the opening he’d left, determined to wedge her damned wide-eyed hopefulness into it. “Your mother doesn’t believe that. She said it was chaos. She said it could have been anyone’s bullet.”

Kylo grimaced at his mother’s unfailing faith in him, squeezing his eyes shut. “But it wasn’t. And he wouldn’t have been there in the first place were it not for me.”

“So that’s it?” she demanded, sharp and so startlingly close he snapped his eyes open. She was standing right next to the bed, looming over him with righteous fury. “You’re just going to stay in this godforsaken place, drinking and gambling and robbing travelers or whatever it is you do, just because you’re too _proud_ to accept your mother’s forgiveness?”

Kylo looked away, but Rey moved, catching his eyes again, insistent.

“Or too self-loathing, is that it? If you actually did something to help people it might be harder to hate yourself, and you can’t have that, can you?”

Kylo took in a slow, deep breath. “What help would I even be?” he asked quietly.

Rey raised an eyebrow, apparently surprised he’d even made that small concession. “Plenty. You were Snoke’s right-hand man for years. You know more about how he thinks than anyone.” When Kylo didn’t say anything, she forged ahead eagerly, like a traveling salesman giving a pitch. “My partner I mentioned before, Finn—he used to work for Snoke too. He’s given us all the information he has on him, but that can’t be a fraction of what you know. I figure, between the two of you, we should be able to outwit him once and for all.”

“It’s no use,” Kylo said wearily. “He’s a robber baron. His resources are limitless. Maybe we could defeat whoever he sends, but they’re just going to keep coming back. The townsfolk would be better advised to just leave Yavin to him.”

“That’s not an option.” Rey glared at him, and Kylo glared back.

“I can’t help you,” he said stubbornly.

Rey crossed her arms over her chest again. “Ben Solo, you are coming back to Yavin with me, if I have to tie you to my horse and drag you there.”

“Do it,” he goaded, slouching back into the bed. “It would be preferable to suffering through another one of your sermons.”

Rey’s eyes flashed, the lines of her body tense with anger and frustration. Kylo watched her warily, waiting to see what she would do next, the metal of the handcuffs digging uncomfortably into his wrists from his current position. It wasn’t that he was afraid of her, it was just that she’d been unpredictable as a spring storm since he’d made her acquaintance earlier that day. In his current aimless state of existence, he had nowhere better to be at the moment, but the thought of going home was setting off a churning mix of revulsion and longing within him that he did not know how to deal with. Was he such a coward that he would not return of his own volition, but would halfheartedly allow her to drag him back? Or would he cut and run the first chance he got? He didn’t know himself well enough to supply an answer to that question.

Something changed in Rey’s expression, gaze going distant and distracted as she bit her lip and shifted on her feet, a turmoil of indecision clearly raging in her as well. Kylo could see the moment she made her choice, the line of her jaw tightening, eyes going back to his with a startling intensity.

“Do you want the truth?” she demanded.

“Yes,” Kylo replied instantly, forgetting to be enigmatic.

“Your mother didn’t send me. I mean, she did, but not specifically to find you.”

Kylo blinked. As angry as he’d been about the idea moments before, having it ripped from him shouldn’t hurt this much. But hurt it did, a raw tearing deep in his chest where he buried all the things that had once been dear to him.

Rey must have marked the anguish on his face that he tried in vain to hide, because something about her softened for a moment. “Everything else I said is true. She wants you back. I think she just wouldn’t allow herself such a tangible hope. She thinks you’ll return to her in your own time.”

Kylo pressed his lips together, not trusting himself to speak.

Rey took a deep breath. “She sent me with Finn and another man, Poe Dameron, to search for your uncle. Mysterious disappearances run in the family, apparently.” She pursed her lips, giving him a disapproving look. “I split off to find _you_ , because it is my personal opinion that we cannot take Snoke down without you. Sorry excuse of a man that you are at the moment.” Her eyes skimmed him up and down as though searching for something, and coming up wanting.

Kylo could not fault her for that. He’d failed at being a good man a long time ago, and a bad man more recently. He was adrift between two worlds, belonging in neither.

Abruptly, Rey took a seat on the bed, so close her hip brushed the side of his knee. Kylo put up a mighty struggle to focus on her face and not the warmth he could feel through both layers of their respective clothing.

“I want you,” she said quietly, as though afraid someone might overhear, “to help me kill Snoke.”

And _that_ startled him like nothing she’d done or said before had. Kylo’s mouth dropped open, and when he managed to speak the word was a hoarse whisper. “What?”

“That’s the only way to stop him,” she said, her fervor growing as she spoke. “No one in Yavin will agree with that, but judging by your reputation, I thought you would.” She leaned forward. “If we cut off the head of the snake, it can never strike us again.”

She looked beautiful in the lamplight, beautiful and angry and intense, a storm raging in her brown eyes and a determined set to her chin, and Kylo’s mouth was still open, and he was almost panting, and surely there was something wrong with him that this new side of herself she’d revealed made her all the more attractive to him. He angled his hips away from her, hoping the sudden embarrassing tightness of his pants would go unnoticed.

“Who are you?” he asked again, hoping for a proper answer this time.

She sighed. “My name is Rey Foster. My parents emigrated here from England, bought land, started a ranch. A successful one. We were happy.” A small, wistful smile tugged at her lips, and Kylo’s breath caught in his chest, because—damn it all—that was beautiful too. And fleeting, for she was somber again when she continued. “Too happy. Snoke sent his men to take it by any means necessary. They killed my parents. I was six.”

Kylo stiffened, uncomfortable memories flashing through his mind. He’d never orphaned a child—not that he knew of—but he’d forcibly stolen for Snoke, shot people who’d tried to put up a fight. His sins ran deep, buried but ever-present, unforgivable.

Rey mistook the source of his discomfort. “You weren’t there. I would remember.” It was not an excuse, or a condemnation, merely a statement of fact.

“No,” he agreed, voice rough. “Not _there_.” The emphasis left little doubt as to his meaning. They held each other’s gaze for a moment, raw and vulnerable, and it was not absolution he saw in her eyes, but it was something he’d long given up on. Hope, maybe.

Kylo looked away first, clearing his throat, desperate to change the topic. “How old do you think I am?” he said sourly. “I was barely shaving when you were six.”

“Hmmm,” Rey murmured. “By all appearances, that’s still true.”

Kylo scowled. “That was below the belt.”

Rey laughed, clearly delighted with herself, and with it the grave mood dissipated.

Kylo did not waste time considering her proposal. “I’ll do it,” he blurted out before he could change his mind.

“What?” Rey looked startled.

“I’ll help you kill Snoke,” he repeated, voice deep and sure, surprised to find that he had not been so sure of anything in a long time as he was about this slip of a girl, this woman whom he hardly knew, with her clever mind and her quick hands and her righteous fury and her wide-eyed hope and her beautiful, rare smile.

Which had just made another brief appearance as she said breathlessly, disbelievingly, “You will?”

God help him, he was in trouble.

He slouched further down into the bed, handcuffed arms cradled uncomfortably next to one cheek—where there _was_ a shadow of stubble, despite what Rey said—and stared up at the ceiling, chest heaving with a gusty sigh. “Do you know what my uncle would have to say about this?”

“No.” She sounded wary.

Kylo smiled up at the ceiling, equal parts bitter and nostalgic. “ _Avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath. For it is written: vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord_.”

“Are you really quoting the apostle Paul to me?” Her voice was warm with amusement. “You, of all people?”

“I was going to be a preacher,” Kylo murmured. “Once upon a time.”

Rey snorted. “Pity the poor congregation that would have had to put up with you.”

Kylo shot her a sidelong glare, but there was no real heat behind it. He could hardly disagree.

Looking at her now, a small smile hovering at the corner of her mouth, she looked so young once again, and Kylo rushed to sit up, handcuffs clanking against the bars of the bed, filled with a sudden earnestness and clarity of purpose. “I mean it, Rey,” he said, jerking his head to toss a stray lock of hair out of his eyes. “Revenge can take you down a dark path. Trust me on this.”

Rey sobered, eyes darting over every angle of his face, and gave a tiny nod, as if encouraging him to say more.

“I will help you kill Snoke if that’s what you truly want. It’s no burden on my conscience.” Kylo frowned. “In fact, it would probably be a lightening of it. It’s something I should have done a long time ago, to be honest. But I think—” His voice wavered, and he looked down. “I think I didn’t have the courage to do it alone. To face what I’ve done, to pay the recompense, to maybe die in the attempt with no one to mourn me.”

Kylo shifted on the bed, still averting his eyes, unsure why all these confessions were pouring from his mouth.

Suddenly, startlingly, Rey’s warm hand cupped his cheek, the gesture so heartbreakingly similar to his father’s last one that Kylo could do nothing but close his eyes and lean into it and struggle to breathe through the crushing weight in his chest.

Rey’s thumb brushed against his skin, a tiny, almost tender movement, and Kylo could not remember the last time he’d been touched like that by someone who had no obligation to do so, by someone whose blood did not run in his veins, by someone who had every right to hate him for the things he had done.

“You won’t be alone,” she whispered, and though his eyes were still shut she was close enough that he could feel the warmth of her breath gust across his lips. Then she was brushing that stubborn lock of his hair behind his ear, and her hand fell away from him.

Kylo found the courage to look at her then, but Rey was still sitting close enough for him to see that she had flecks of green in the depths of her eyes, and none of this was helping the sense that he was steadily falling into a pit from which he might never emerge.

Rey was speaking again, voice sure and steady. “Revenge might take some down a dark path, but this is not revenge. This is justice.”

“Some would say they are one and the same,” Kylo said softly. How this girl managed to both infuriate him beyond belief and make him want to be gentle was more than he could comprehend at the moment.

Rey’s lips curled up. “You said you were going to be a preacher?”

Kylo murmured an affirmation.

“Then you should know the prophet Isaiah said _learn to do good, seek justice, rebuke the oppressor_.”

Kylo’s eyes lingered on her lips as she spoke. He was feeling decidedly ungodly at the moment.

“I suppose we will have time to argue doctrine on the road.”

“I suppose we will,” Rey agreed, and it seemed that she leaned even _closer_ to him. He was finding it difficult to breathe again, but for an entirely different reason this time.

Rey smiled, and it looked a little wicked, then she withdrew from the bed so quickly Kylo almost toppled over in surprise. He gaped up at her, feeling bereft and oddly vulnerable still handcuffed to the bed.

“Now get some sleep,” Rey ordered. “We have a long journey ahead of us.”

Kylo scowled. “Are you going to give me my money back?”

Rey flashed a smile again, and this one had dimples. “Why would I do that? I won it fair and square.”

Kylo’s scowl deepened, though he had the uncomfortable feeling his eyes were betraying a sort of admiration for her ruthlessness, if the smug look on her face was any indication. He sent a look heavenward, as if praying for patience—though he had not prayed in years. This girl might just drive him to it.

“Will you at least uncuff me so I can sleep?”

Rey drummed her fingers against the butt of one of her pistols, considering. Then, all in one swift movement, she fished a key out of her pocket, leaning over him to unlock one of his wrists, so close to his face that he got a noseful of sun and soap and whiskey—not the sort of womanly perfume men dreamed about but Kylo found himself inhaling it with relish, a stupid, sleepy smile on his face. He’d been mostly startled out of his drunkenness since Rey had taken him hostage, but now it was catching up to him, and he was feeling warm and dozy and hopeful that she might curl herself up next to him to sleep, and he instinctively followed the movement of her arm across the bed to make room for her, and she—

—snapped the empty cuff closed around the middle bar of the headboard, leaving Kylo with one wrist free and one cuffed, but enough freedom of movement to find a comfortable sleeping position.

Rey moved back, chuckling at the startled look on his face. “Trust has to be earned,” she offered by way of explanation as she fashioned a makeshift bed on the floor with one of the pillows and her overcoat.

The last thing Kylo saw before she doused the lamp was her smile, small and pleased with herself and yes, a little wicked, leaving him staring up at the dark ceiling, wondering if he should attempt an escape in the morning after all, flooded with the conviction that if he did not leave her now, he might never be able to leave her again.

But Kylo Ren had spent his entire life leaving things behind. Perhaps it was time for Ben Solo to go home. And if home looked like Rey, well—he would be a fool to fight it.

**Author's Note:**

> One of the lines in here is shamelessly cribbed from Westworld, and while I'm confessing to these things, Kylo's outfit is essentially Hector Escaton's, with added ridiculous silver embellishment on the hat, because he's Kylo. And yes, the pants are indeed That Tight.
> 
> Happy New Year, La_Catrina!


End file.
